Dane Cook

Dane Cook
Dane Cook in 2007
Pseudonym	Sav McCauley Gene Winterbuck Foreign Guy
Born	(1972-03-18) March 18, 1972 Arlington, Massachusetts
Medium	Stand up comedy, film, television
Nationality	American
Years active	1997-present
Genres	Stand-up Comedy
Subject(s)	observational comedy
Website	danecook.com

Dane Jeffrey Cook (born March 18, 1972) is an American stand-up comedian, actor and musician. He has released three comedy albums, Harmful If Swallowed, Retaliation (which went double platinum), and Rough Around the Edges: Live From Madison Square Garden. Retaliation became the highest charting comedy album in twenty-eight years. Cook performs on many television shows and in the fall of 2006 performed in his own HBO special, Vicious Circle. As an actor, Cook has appeared in fifteen films since 1997, including Mystery Men, the 2005 film "Waiting...", and starred in the 2006 comedy Employee of the Month with Jessica Simpson. He also appeared in the 2007 thriller film Mr. Brooks in a departure from his standard comedic roles.

Life and career

Early life

Cook was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the son of Donna and George Cook, a radio DJ. He has Irish ancestry. Cook grew up in Arlington, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb and, along with his five sisters and one brother, was raised as a Roman Catholic. He is a fan and collector of Fangoria magazine, claiming to own the first 100 issues.

Early career

Cook's first on-stage appearance at a comedy club was at a Catch a Rising Star show in Harvard Square, hosted at the time by comedian David Cross. In 1998, Cook was featured on Comedy Central's stand-up comedy showcase Premium Blend. The following year he appeared on the comedy network's Comics Come Home and the straight-to-video Dennis Rodman vehicle, Simon Sez as Rodman's partner, Nick Miranda. He also had a cameo in the film Mystery Men and the music video for the song All Star by Smash Mouth, also featured in the film.

Two years later, Cook pooled $30,000 of his own money from savings and retirement accounts and launched www.danecook.com, his own interactive website, to further his career and stay connected to his fans. Later, Cook would also become one of the first celebrities to make use of the global networking site MySpace. To date, Cook has over 2 million fans listed as friends on his profile. In 2002 and 2003, Cook was featured as the voice of three puppets on Comedy Central's Crank Yankers, which featured real prank phone calls being recorded in a studio and then re-enacted by puppets. Four of Cook's calls were aired between July 2002 and April 2003. He took on the aliases of Sav McCauley, Gene Winterbuck, and Foreign Guy.

Included with Cook's first comedy album, Harmful If Swallowed (2003) was a DVD with the Comedy Central special. Later that year, Cook wrote, directed, and starred in 8 Guys.

Dane released his second 3 disc cd/dvd set Retaliation taking the number 4 slot on Billboards top 100.

2005 - 2006

Cook was featured in the 2005 comedy Waiting... as Floyd the cook. Cook hosted SNL for a second time on the premiere of its thirty-second season, September 30, 2006. On January 13, 2006, after months of keeping a "BIG secret" from his fans, he announced via his website an April 15 gig at Boston's TD Banknorth Garden where his first HBO special, Vicious Circle, would be eventually filmed. His first show sold out during the pre-sale phase of ticket sales, and a second show was added for the same night. In all, Dane Cook's Boston concert drew 36,000 fans in two shows, on the same night. A documentary series and a scripted program are also in the works for HBO. In the week prior to the televised gig, he performed at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas (April 8) and Allstate Arena in Chicago (April 13), the largest venues he has ever performed in those cities. Aside from airing on HBO, Vicious Circle is also being screened in select theaters and it features an additional 40 minutes of material.

September saw the release of Employee of the Month, Cook's first movie featuring him in the lead role. He co-starred alongside Jessica Simpson and Dax Shepard. Response to this movie was lukewarm but made an acceptable box office performance.

At the end of December 2006, Cook released "I'll Never Be You" his first single. In the song, Dane sings from the perspective of a normal person ("My life stands still, watching where your life goes"), commenting with envy ("sometimes I picture myself beating you up") at a celebrity or otherwise popular person. He was named in Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of 2006.

Dane Cook's first HBO special, Vicious Circle, was aired on September 4, 2006. The double DVD was released on November 28, 2006. It is a 90-minute presentation which was filmed at TD Banknorth Garden in his hometown of Boston, Massachusetts on a circular stage surrounded by the audience. The stage had on it the impression of his Super Finger hand gesture. Cook brought the same set to Madison Square Garden for back-to-back sold out shows on November 12, 2006.

2007

On June 1, 2007, the film Mr. Brooks was released to theaters to generally mixed reviews. Cook played opposite Kevin Costner as Mr. Smith, a devious reporter, and he received generally positive reviews for his performance, with the New York Times saying that "...when he's onscreen, you can't look at anyone else". The same year, he starred alongside Jessica Alba in Good Luck Chuck and Dan in Real Life, as a man whose brother (fellow Massachusetts native Steve Carell) falls for his girlfriend. He also released another album, titled Rough Around the Edges on November 13, 2007.

On July 26, he became the first celebrity on myspace.com to hit 2 million friends. On August 28, 2007, Cook released the DVD collection The Lost Pilots for fans all around the world. Included are the two pilots titled Cooked 1 and Cooked 2. In the former, he plays a stand-up comedian who, after living in the easy life, loses it all and schemes relentlessly to get it back. In the latter, Cook is a charismatic guy who's always looking forward to his next life experience. His best friends, Mike, the perennial cynic, and Dakota, the-girl-next-door, accompany him as he tries to trade an antique electric chair for a knife wielding samurai monkey trained in the martial arts.

Recently, Cook has been doing October playoff commercials for Major League Baseball. He has also released his second single "Forward." He finished filming Bachelor No. 2 in his hometown of Boston with his co-stars Kate Hudson and Alec Baldwin. Cook will be producing the film through his company Super-Finger Entertainment. And he embarked on his first ever 25 city/28 show Arena tour which he called "Rough Around The Edges," to promote the sale of his new album.

2008

On January, 3rd, 2008 Dane Cook, performed stand up comedy, at the Laugh Factory, for nearly 7 hours, beating the record of 6 hours and 12 minutes, set by Dave Chappelle, less than a month before.

Style

Cook's style is principally observational humor. He tends to talk about his childhood, and his plans for the future, such as his "dream home". He will sometimes deliver jokes in the form of over the top rants. He has commented that:

I wanted to create a stage persona for myself that allowed me to really speak on (sic) anything I want... So I can be a storyteller, I can be jokey, I can be corny, I can be a little vulgar, I can be a lot vulgar. And I'm not afraid to go anywhere to get the point of the joke across, even if I have to just blabber like an idiot until it becomes apparent that I'm telling a joke and that the audience should laugh.

Cook uses slang vocabulary to match his talkative manner. For example: A bad relationship is a "Relationshit", Walgreens is "The Wall," and a sandwich is a "sangwich". Similarly, he uses such acronyms as BAMF and SUFI, which are short for "Bad Ass Mother Fucker", which is originally believed to refer to 24's Jack Bauer , and "SUperFInger," respectively. He is also known to call Burger King, "the BK Lounge." He also shortens words to keep the same meaning. He has even been known to completely change words or phrases, like saying "Concernicus" instead of concerned, "Chicken Sangwich" instead of Chicken Sandwich, "agrain" instead of again, and "chat-chitting" rather than "chit-chatting". Afterwards he says, "Yeah, I just flipped that shit...they're just words, they don't control us...not anymore."

Controversy and criticism

Material/Plagiarism

After the release of his CD/DVD Retaliation, similarities were noticed between Cook's work and material recorded on Louis C.K.'s 2001 album Live in Houston. The bits in question are Louis C.K.'s "Itchy Asshole," "Guy On A Bike," and "Naming Kids." In 2005, Dane Cook performed and released three similar routines on Retaliation. These are "Itchy Asshole," "Struck By A Vehicle," and "My Son Optimus Prime," respectively.

In 2005, on the message boards of comedy website A Special Thing, C.K. posted a response to his fans who accused Cook of plagiarizing from him writing "Okay, this kid is stealing from me. And making lots of money. Three bits on one CD." Later, C.K. wrote "Just so you know, guys, I'm not going to do anything about this.... I'm not going to court over a bit called 'Itchy Asshole.'" In an interview on the Free Beer & Hot Wings Morning Show in February 2007, C.K. stated that while the jokes are similar, the issue was "overblown" and may stem from a backlash against Cook's popularity. However, C.K. accused Cook of being "bullyish" and litigious towards comedians for having similar material to his despite Cook claiming elsewhere that comedians often have similar material and it is not a big issue to him. C.K. also stated "Too bad the guy [Cook] can't write enough." C.K. ended the interview by saying, "Fuck Dane Cook, he's a cunt."

Comedian Joe Rogan has spoken on many occasions (including the December 1, 2006 broadcast of the Opie and Anthony Show) about Cook performing a bit on an episode of Premium Blend that Rogan had developed on I'm Gonna Be Dead Someday (sketch titled 'Tigers Fucking'), and claims to have performed the routine earlier in clubs with Cook present. Rob Sheffield criticized Dane Cook's material in a Rolling Stone article from October 2006, claiming a joke he performed was originally done by Emo Philips. Comedian Ron White has criticized Dane Cook for his lack of real material and for his inflated ego. At a 2007 Irving Plaza show, comedian Zach Galifianakis commented, “I saw Employee of the Month the other day...it wasn't as good as I thought it was gonna be.” During his closing number he revealed a sign that read “Kill Dane Cook" before leaving the stage. Less publicized accusations of comedic plagiarism by Cook emerged in September 2006 on Saturday Night Live by Demetri Martin of Daily Show fame. Clips on Youtube show a stand up bit Cook suppossedly lifted from Martin's 9/26/06 release of his live material These Are Jokes on some trouble buying shoes, where Cook goes as far as using the same incorrect shoe size (size 9) that Martin mentioned in his joke that was released 4 days before Cook's performance of a nearly identical shoe joke while hosting SNL on 9/30/06.

In addition to such specific claims of plagiarism, numerous commentators have characterized Dane Cook's humor as unfunny, banal, and lacking jokes.

Yuk-Yuks controversy

On July 24, 2006 Cook asked for a guest spot at the Vancouver Yuk-Yuks comedy club. Initially he was set to go up at the end of the night, but upon arriving at the club he requested to go up before the headliner. Cook's performance went on for longer than the management had asked him, so the club's manager and headliner (Peter Kelamis) cut off his microphone and tried to "play him off" with music. Cook thought it was simply a mistake and continued his set, but they later cut his mic and played the exit music again. Cook then dropped the mic and walked off-stage, furious. The show then ended, leaving Cook's fans confused and disappointed. Kelamis then refused to take the stage, and later referred to Cook's actions as "the most arrogant thing that I've ever seen in my life".

However, Mark Breslin, the founder of the comedy club chain, quickly apologized and blamed the club's Manager. Breslin stated in support of Cook, "I'm on Dane's side totally, 100 percent." Breslin also explained that Kelamis was the last show that evening and there was no reason he could not have gone on late, stating "the tradition is that stardom trumps everything".

Other

The SUperFInger

The SUperFInger or SU-FI is a hand gesture. It consists of raising the middle finger, ring finger, and thumb on the same hand while lowering (or curling) the index and pinky fingers half way. Cook's website explains his idea behind the SU-FI:

One night I did a bit on stage about 5 years ago at the Laugh Factory. I was talking about how the finger is lame now and it's lost its pizzaz. I said I wanted to upgrade the finger and so from now on people should use both the ring finger coupled with the middle finger. I called it the SUperFInger (or SU-FI)

In 2005, Cook started his own company to produce his albums and videos, which he named SUperFInger Entertainment.

Discography

Albums

• 2003: Harmful If Swallowed (CD/DVD) Comedy Central. #67 US. Certified Platinum
• 2005: Retaliation (2CD/DVD) Comedy Central. #4 US. Certified Double Platinum
• 2007: Rough Around the Edges: Live from Madison Square Garden (CD/DVD).

DVDs

• 2006: Vicious Circle DVD. HBO.
• 2006: Dane Cook's Tourgasm DVD. HBO. Comedy Central.
• 2007: The Lost Pilots DVD. Sony Pictures Television

Singles

Year	Title	Chart positions						Album
		US Hot 100	US Modern Rock	US Mainstream Rock	US Pop 100	UK Singles Chart	Germany
2006	"I'll Never Be You"	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
2007	"Forward"	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

Filmography

Year	Title	Role
1997	Flypaper	Tim
	Buddy	Fair Cop
1999	Spiral	David
	Simon Sez	Nick Miranda
	Mystery Men	The Waffler
2002	L.A.X.	Terrell Chasman
	The Touch	Bob
2003	Stuck on You	Officer Fraioli
	8 Guys	Dane
	Windy City Heat	Roman Polanski
2004	Mr. 3000	Sausage Mascot
	Torque	Neil Luff
2005	Waiting...	Floyd
	London	George
2006	Employee of the Month	Zack Bradley
2007	Farce of the Penguins	Voice
	Mr. Brooks	Mr. Smith
	Good Luck Chuck	Chuck/Charlie
	Dan in Real Life	Mitch Burns
2008	Horton Hears a Who	Johnny Smooth
	Bachelor No. 2	Tank

External links

• Official website
• MySpace Page
• Dane Cook at IMDb

News articles & interviews

• Bensinger, Graham. "One-on-One w/ Dane Cook". ESPN The Magazine, December, 2007.

• Bolohan, Scott. "People Love to Hate Dane Cook". Real Detroit Weekly, November 21, 2007.
• Gonulsen, Jason. "There's Only One Dane Cook". Glide Magazine, November 12, 2007.
• Casey, Susan. "Everybody Likes Dane". Entertainment Weekly, Sept. 30, 2005.
• Havrilesky, Heather. "Overcooked". Salon, Sept. 3, 2006.
• Kharakh, Ben. Interview with Dane Cook. One Trick Pony. January 2006.
• Zoglin, Richard. "Dane Cook: Standing Out in the Art of Stand-Up.". Time, May 8, 2006. From Time 100 issue.
• Gladstone, Neil. "Sex, Jobs, and Rock 'n' Roll". AOL Comedy, Nov. 2, 2006.
• Shmuel Reuven. A Dramatic Turn in Mr. Brooks. JewReview.net, May 28, 2007.